Category Archives: Red

We’ve been living it up in Central Europe, having fun in Austria and Hungary, whilst we’ve walked miles and ticked off plenty of sights and artworks from our list, we did find some time to eat and drink well too. I didn’t expect Budapest to be a centre of fine dining, but we found some… Read More »

This Portuguese wine arrived in a mixed case from Laithwaites. To make life easy for everyone, the makers not only call it Lobo e Falcao, they also put [Wolf and Falcon] underneath, with a picture of a wolf and, you guessed it, a falcon on the label. The falcon is a bit alarming, as it’s… Read More »

A pal brought me back a bottle of this when he returned from a trip to see his family in Mumbai. I’m not sure what I did to deserve the honour, but I was happy to receive it. I’d never tried Indian wine before, and my adventures in Chinese and Thai wine had not been… Read More »

I love the name of this wine – Il Brutto. It works best if you say it as though you were an Italian film announcer, the kind of guy who would introduce a trailer for the next action hero block buster “Il Brutto – the Italian cowboy” Go ahead try it in your head, now… Read More »

Sometimes a wine is remembered more for a sense of place and time rather than the flavours it brings to the table. This is very much one of those wines. We were in Dublin when the city was awash with Americans who had just seen a College football game between Georgia Tech and Boston College… Read More »

Costco sells more wine in the USA than any other retailer. It’s not in the same league in the UK, but it does now get a share of my wine buying budget. On our latest shopping trip I wanted to stock up on Raven’s Wood Californian Zinfandel because it’s a reliable hit with gusts, but… Read More »

I was staying in a pub up in Lancashire, the purpose of my trip was a funeral, but as ever on such occasions it was good to get together with family for a meal and some fond reminiscences. With a big table of diners all choosing different dinner options there was no point in trying… Read More »

I’d tried a different vintage of this wine last year, and I’d liked it. This year the label had undergone a serious facelift. Instead of a stylised greyscale image of the mountains of Chile, and some old style typeface it gets a giant image of what seems to be an Easter Island Moai statue. Whilst… Read More »

Cry Freedom! This Grande Liberte is so named as it’s the first wine that the wine maker has made under his own label. Whilst the family has been producing wine for the local co-op for 100 years, this one is intended to stand on its own. It comes with a nice back story of local… Read More »

This was a Direct Wines bottle, with rather a minimalist label, claiming to be Bin Number M13, but I think they just decided there was no point in spending money on label design if the wine was just going to be shipped out in mixed cases selected by their team. It’s not a decision I’m against,… Read More »